didn't know the times were lean

Round our house the grass was green

It didn't seem like things were all that bad

Figuring out what they were going to do was all that seemed to be on his mind these days. They were going to have to do something. They couldn’t carry on doing nothing. But until Graves announced that they were going to restart the leagues, Viktor didn’t know what they were going to do. They couldn’t play internationally with the borders closed, but how long could they really stay closed? He needed them to reopen, they all needed them to reopen. He wasn’t all that great at things like numbers, and math, but he had seen Cissa’s notebooks that she left all over her desk. There was no way that numbers like that could mean anything good.

He was worried about it, though when he had asked, she had said that they weren’t books for the hotel. The hotel was still in the black. And that was good. He didn’t think that she was going to lie to him about that, but he also didn’t know why she thought that she had to move back to Wiltshire and stop living upstairs. So, he didn’t know what to think anymore. What was the excuse that she had given? Space? That it would be good for all of them to have some space? He didn’t believe it. And he knew that Rae didn’t believe it. But it wasn’t like they could force her to stay.

Lock her in her room, maybe? But he didn’t think that that was going to be feasible in the long run. And he knew that Rae was worried about her being far away, but Elsie helped with that. Or that was the point of gifting his wife with a house elf. She was supposed to help with things when Cissa wasn’t around. And he didn’t know if it was working or not. He didn’t think that Rae had ever had an elf before, it wasn’t something that you just got used to overnight. It was something that you had to adjust to. And he knew that her knowing that she couldn’t just run to the hotel and hand Jack over to his godmother when she couldn’t get him to stop crying wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to wrap their heads around.

Viktor hadn’t been around when Vzá was a baby. He didn’t know hardly anything about babies. And he thought that Rae probably knew even less. They would figure it out though. He knew that they would. But still. He thought that it was probably meant time that they were going to have to spend doing, Merlin only knew what, to learn. Things that they had been relying on Cissa just to know. He shook his head, because thinking about his lack of baby parenting abilities wasn’t the point of coming out to the pitch. He was coming to meet Titania.

They had experience that the younger kids didn’t, and he thought that she would probably be the one that he wanted to talk to anyway. They were friends, and colleagues, as much as he was coach. She was his seeker, but she was a coach all on her own. The Falcons, no less. She was damn good. And he thought that if he was going to pick anyone’s brain about this mess, it might as well have been hers. Coming up beside her he set the coffee down on the high table and looked out across the empty pitch. “It’s eerie like this…”

Titania Galadriel Buchanan • 577 • viktor's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]We were walkin' in high cotton,

[attr="class","cscriptquidd"]old times there are not forgotten,

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]Those fertile fields are never far away,[break]
We were walkin' in high cotton

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]Being without magic, being without the ability to fly, was something that she was still coming to terms with. What made it harder still was what she knew, and the rest of the world didn’t. While everyone wanted to know why this had happened to them, she had that answer. And she had to admit, it didn’t make her feel any better.
[break][break]
Maybe it would help everyone else. Having someone to blame, having someone to point a finger at and cast their anger onto. It probably would, actually. Having someone or something to blame was better than just wondering where this epidemic had come from and why it had happened. But for her, knowing those answers only made everything worse. Not only did she have to come to terms with the fact that her magic was gone, she had to come to terms with the fact that it had been her husband that had taken it from her.
[break][break]
That was the worst part of this. Worse even than not being able to fly. If she was like the rest of the United Kingdom, if she had no clue what had caused this or why it had happened, Titania was certain that she would be devastated that she couldn’t fly. It was something she’d been doing since she was old enough to walk—and something she’d been a part of professionally since she graduated Hogwarts, whether it was playing or coaching. And she was devastated, of course. But there was just so much more for her to worry about. It was hard to even think about flying, with everything else on her mind. She had absolutely no idea what to do.
[break][break]
The decision to leave Art, or to kick him out, had been a difficult one to make. In some ways, she worried that it was going to push the kids—or at least Viv and Vet, to ask hard questions. They were both old enough to understand that them separating made no sense. They had gone from being almost annoyingly happy to barely speaking, in the blink of an eye. There had been no signs of them not doing well. No fighting. No anything. They had gone from fine, to almost ignoring each other, to Art moving out, just like that.
[break][break]
Both of her daughters were old enough to realize that there was something going on that they didn’t know. She had no idea what they thought. Nothing they could be thinking was as bad as the truth. Somehow, that made her feel better. They could be talking to each other, brainstorming how this was possible, but nothing that they could come up with was as awful as the reality. That their father had created an epidemic to steal people’s magic. That people had died because of him. They couldn’t think that.
[break][break]
Honestly, the worst that they could probably come up with was that one of them had cheated. And since she was dating Marcus now, even if they didn’t explicitly know about that, she would likely be the one they’d point the finger at if they came to that conclusion. Merlin, she didn’t know what she was going to do if they decided she had cheated and sided with their father. It was unfathomable.
[break][break]
There was no reason to worry all that much about that yet, though. She had no intention of telling them that she was dating until the time was right. Hopefully, after enough time had gone by that they wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. If he was even in the picture, then. There was honestly no way of knowing what was going to happen—with anything. Titania knew that worrying about it wasn’t going to do her any good at all, so instead she had focused on why she was on Scotland’s pitch at all today. Viktor had wanted to talk to her.
[break][break]
She wasn’t going to jump to conclusions. If she wasn’t friends with him, she would think there was a possibility that he was going to push for her to retire now that she was also without her magic. And she knew that she was old to still be playing professionally. More than likely, she would be retiring before the qualifiers for the next World Cup even came around. She had just wanted it to be her choice, and not be because of the epidemic.
[break][break]
Still, she knew Viktor. If he wanted her to retire, he’d come out and say it.
[break][break]
She made it to the pitch before him, and it was quiet. Strange to see it so completely empty, of course, but kind of peaceful at the same time. “Maybe a little. Or peaceful, if you’re putting an optimistic spin on it.” It was just a stark contrast to how packed it had been during the World Cup match there, against England. “So, what’s going on? You aren’t bribing me with coffee to convince me to retire, are you?” It was at least worth teasing him about, even if she was decently sure that wasn’t what this was about.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]846 ● @ viktor ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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DIDN'T KNOW THE TIMES WERE LEAN

ROUND OUR HOUSE THE GRASS WAS GREEN

IT DIDN'T SEEM LIKE THINGS WERE ALL THAT BAD

When the illness had started to strike, they had known very little about it, and Viktor could still say that he knew very little about it. He knew that it had impacted his wife, and it had impacted Narcissa, and for as little as he saw Draco, he knew that it had impacted him as well. They were not the same people that they had been when it had started, but his family, and their friends were not the only people that it had touched. Though he knew that there were some that it had spared.

Whether by location, or happy chance, it seemed as though the Potters had remained untouched, and he was grateful for that. That was the last thing that they needed to deal with on top of everything else. They were plenty of other things to be concerned about. Things that had very little to do with the illness itself. Viktor knew that they were not going to be able to do nothing forever. He knew that changes would have to come. And he knew that they would be a part of it.

That was not his fight. He had never wanted to be a part of that great escapade, and he knew that they knew that. He was far too neutrally aligned for that. They had ties to the Light, they had ties to those that fought against everything that was happening, but he knew that they had deep connections to the other side as well. Desirae’s connection to Narcissa. The fact that he considered himself indebted to the Minister herself. He owed her Desirae’s life. And the life of his son.

There were things that Viktor would not do, and he thought that his lines were a little blurry. What was too far one sided, and too far to the other were up to him to decide in the moment. But that changed very little. He would continue to live the life that he had been living all along, and that was as good as it was going to get. That was all that he could ask for. Today he had not asked Titania out here to talk of such things. He had come out here to ask her about quidditch. Coach to coach, instead of coach to player. About what it was that they were going to do now.

With no word on the season restarting, with no word on anything changing at all, there was nothing that they could truly do, but their numbers were reduced. He knew that they weren’t exactly needing a national team at the moment, but that didn’t change the fact that his team had been drastically reduced. She was not the only member that had fallen ill, though he thought that she might just be the one that was hardest to replace. She had a keen eye on the field that was more than just seeker, it was that of a coach. And that had led them to all of their victories in the last season. Experience.

“We could use some optimism, that’s true.” There was something eerie about this place when it was empty though. As if there were something haunting it. The sounds of crowds long gone. The thrill of matches that had been won, and the sorrow of those that had been lost. It was all here, in this place. In the quiet. “Not at all.” He shook his head when she asked about retirement. There was a little laughter in his voice at that thought, he doubted she would have taken that quietly. “I asked you here to pick your brain about what we’re going to do. Borders closed. No league up and running, do we look for recruits to start training, just in case? Or do we let it be for now? See if there’s even going to be a league, before we look at finding people to play for the national squad?”

@ titania • 661 • viktor's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]WE WERE WALKIN' IN HIGH COTTON,

[attr="class","cscriptquidd"]old times there are not forgotten,

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[attr="class","clyrics"]THOSE FERTILE FIELDS ARE NEVER FAR AWAY,[break]
WE WERE WALKIN' IN HIGH COTTON

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[attr="class","cbody"]The events of the past couple of months were not ones that she ever could have predicted. It was not something that she’d ever even seen coming and she didn’t know how to deal with them now. She was doing her best. That was honestly all that she could do. She could make the hard choices—she could choose to leave Art… choose to kick him out and restrict how often he was allowed to see the kids. She could put on a good face but refuse to give the girls the truth. Vivien and Olivette were the only two old enough to really question the decision, and questioning was exactly what they were doing. To them, it didn’t make sense. She knew that it wasn’t going to be something that they would drop any time soon. They were only going to keep asking.
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She didn’t know for sure what Art was telling them, when he did get to see them. She knew there was a chance that he would eventually get frustrated with her and use that opportunity to spin the situation and blame her. She was dating now. If that got out, she knew that he could hope that the girls would think that she’d cheated or something like that. She didn’t think that he was at that point yet, but she knew there was a chance of him lashing out if he got mad at her continuing to shut him out.
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But that was all that she could do. That was all that she wanted to do. Titania could barely tolerate being in the same room as him most of the time. Before she had kicked him out, when she had still been sick, he was greeted with stony silence when they were in private, and cordial answers and a semblance of normalcy when the kids were around. She had faked that for them, though she was decently sure that they had seen right through it. It hadn’t stopped her from trying. Before she had known what she was going to do, while she was still feverish and recovering, it had been the best decision that she could make. But once she had been better, there had been no other choice for her to make. Leaving him, taking that time, it had been the right decision.
[break][break]
She hadn’t known if she would ever let him move back home, if things would ever be normal again. Even if he spent every waking hour looking for a cure, even if he found one, it wouldn’t change the fact that he had done this. There was no making that better. There was no making up for that. Nothing he could do would fix the fact that he had caused this mess to begin with. He had caused it to prove some point to his family, had caused it for revenge—it didn’t matter what he wanted to call it, it was revenge. But it wasn’t just his siblings and his parents that had been impacted. He had deemed it necessary, and now his wife was sick. His daughter was sick. She hoped that he thought that it was worth it, because there was a good chance that he’d lost them entirely.
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Titania was at least relatively certain that he had lost her. She didn’t know that she could ever look at him the same way again, that she could ever share a bed with him or be his wife again. How could she? This Art was not the man that she had married. The man that she married wouldn’t have done this to the people that he loved, or innocent people. She shouldn’t have to be meeting with Viktor at the pitch to talk about the future of Quidditch, of their teams, of their jobs, because her husband had decided to take so much from people that hadn’t deserved it.
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“Good,” she teased, pushing all of those bad thoughts away. They were not what she wanted to be thinking about around Viktor. She didn’t like thinking about it all if she could help it. That was just so much easier said than done. “It’s a good question. I mean… we’ve got two years until qualifiers for Worlds.” They definitely had more time to worry about a national team than league teams had. Leagues were just left without a season and without a clue when the next season would be starting up again. “I don’t mean to sound horribly lazy—you know I want us to win next go around, more than anybody. But without the league season going, I don’t know if there’s much sense in recruiting. We get our best players from those teams. It’s the majority of our scouting pool.” She just wasn’t sure who they were going to find with the league season cancelled, and with the World Cup qualifying matches so far away, she thought it might make more sense to wait until the league season started up again. And Merlin—with two years until those matches, she had to hope a cure was found by then.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]851 ● @ viktor ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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DIDN'T KNOW THE TIMES WERE LEAN

ROUND OUR HOUSE THE GRASS WAS GREEN

IT DIDN'T SEEM LIKE THINGS WERE ALL THAT BAD

Viktor didn’t like the idea that they were just going to sit back and let this happen to them. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t who he was and what he did. He wasn’t the kind of person that just let life pass them by. He had always been proactive. He had always looked to the future just as much as he focused on the present. And he thought that that was important. He thought that now more than ever they had to keep looking to the future. There was only so much that anyone could do now. They were stuck in this holding pattern, no real clear path forward.

And that was just how it seemed like it was going to continue to be. Without a cure they didn’t have half the players that they normally did. There were a handful, sure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. They were faced with choices that they couldn’t possibly make, and without knowing what it was that they were going to do, and how they were going to handle it, he thought that there were some serious decisions to make. About the future of the sport as a whole, really. But those were not his worries to carry.

There were plenty of other people for that. People with far more political sense than he had. Because decisions like that came from the top, and politics was something that Viktor wanted to stay as far away from as he could. He was a pureblood, and he knew what that meant to people, but he wasn’t a British pureblood. Which made him lesser, to some degree. Not as less as a halfblood. Certainly not as low as a muggleborn. But he thought that all of the labels, and all of the nonsense was just ridiculous in the first place.

Things like that shouldn’t matter so much. Clearly it hadn’t mattered when someone had taken it upon themselves to go ahead and steal magic. No one had cared what someone’s blood status was. They were all affected, for not affected, just the same. There was no use in wishing for something not to happen, or to happen. It was all one and the same. It was all something that either was or was not going to be, and for him it had not happened. He had not fallen ill. He was fine. And there was some level of guilt in that.

That he was okay, and Desirae was sick. And Narcissa was sick. And Titania was sick. He knew that everywhere that he turned, people were sick. They were dealing with the loss of something that he still had. With the loss of something that he hadn’t, that no one had, known could be taken away. It was a profound situation. One that they had to try and take day by day. That’s what they had been doing for months, and it was what they had to do now. It was what they were going to have to continue to do, until things got better or worse.

Thinking about them getting worse was not something that he wanted to do. He didn’t think that any of them really wanted that. Viktor nodded at her assessment. “You’re right. I just can’t sit around and do nothing. Not when I can fly. Not when I’ve been left with this.” And he knew that he shouldn’t complain about still having his magic. It was something to be proud of, something that he should be using for something. But other than quidditch, he didn’t have any exceptional talents. “I just feel like I need to do something. For the League, for the National squad. For someone.”

@ titania • 620 • viktor's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

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[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]WE WERE WALKIN' IN HIGH COTTON,

[attr="class","cscriptquidd"]old times there are not forgotten,

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]THOSE FERTILE FIELDS ARE NEVER FAR AWAY,[break]
WE WERE WALKIN' IN HIGH COTTON

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[attr="class","cbody"]There was so much about this situation that was difficult. So much of it that was so horribly hard for her to even imagine. Titania was doing her best to get through it, but there was no denying that it had been hard on her. It was wearing on her, day after day. It wasn’t just losing her magic that she had to deal with. It wasn’t just losing her career because of it. Losing the ability to fly had been the hardest blow for her personally—for her, flying had always been important to her. It was what she did when she was upset and needed to get away. It was something that she did when she’d had a long day and needed a distraction.
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And playing professionally had been something she’d done since she had graduated Hogwarts. She had gone from playing for the Cannons to the Falcons. She had won two MVP awards, one of which had been awarded to her the year that she’d come back after having Vivien. Having a child, getting back into shape to play professional Quidditch, and then being the one player to be named MVP that season had been one of her proudest professional achievements. It had proven to her that she could still have her Quidditch career and be a mother. She had been incredibly proud of that. The years had gone on, and she had still managed to balance being a mother and her career. She had always kept that balance, because both had been important to her.
[break][break]
She had lost that with the epidemic, and as far as her own magic went, that had been the hardest thing for her to come to terms with. But there was so much more for her to concern herself with. There was so much more on her mind than just what she had lost when she had lost her magic. Her husband had been the one that had done this. He had created this thing, this virus that had taken so much for so many people. Even though she had kicked him out of the house, even though they were separated, that was still so hard for her to come to terms with.
[break][break]
Titania didn’t know what she was supposed to do. The kids were asking why the separation had happened. Her parents were, her brother and sister-in-law were. All of their friends had asked and wondered, and even though they had stopped talking about it when they could tell that she was getting upset, she could see it in their eyes that they were still curious. They had always been an incredibly stable couple—they did not shy away from physical affection in public. It was clear that they loved each other, so of course it didn’t make sense to the people around them that they had separated. But what was she supposed to tell them? She couldn’t tell anyone the truth. Titania had no one to talk to about it. As far as she knew, she was the only person that knew what the Buchanan twins had done, apart from them. Perhaps Wendy had told her own husband, but he was a Muggle. His lack of a connection to the magical world made it a different situation, even if he did know.
[break][break]
Was she supposed to turn them in? A part of her wondered if not telling anyone made her just as culpable herself. But how was she supposed to turn her husband in? How was she supposed to do that to him? She had loved him for almost half of his life. Twenty years was a long time. She didn’t know that she could throw that all away and throw him to the wolves. She didn’t want to imagine him in Azkaban, or worse. A biological weapon released on the wizarding world—was that enough to merit the Dementor’s Kiss? She didn’t want to imagine it. She couldn’t.
[break][break]
Turning him wasn’t an option. Despite how upset she was, she couldn’t do that. It was just not an option. That left her confused and at a complete loss. She was trying to go about her life as normal, but how could she do that? It was hard, sometimes. But she knew that she had to try to keep going. She didn’t think being upset would draw suspicion—she was separated from her husband, that was reason in and of itself to be upset. But she still didn’t want to pull people’s attention toward her by looking miserable all of the time. “Like what?” She asked, gently. She didn’t want to be pessimistic or anything like that, but she also wasn’t sure what he could do right now to fix anything. “I’m not sure there’s anything you could be doing.”
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]800 ● @ viktor ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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